Adam is co-founder of Mint Themes and designer of the Astoundify crowd funding theme. We have a great discussion about how he built his companies, leveraged SEO to drive traffic, and how to price products.

If you find yourself sitting in a similar seat — don’t miss this!

Interview with Adam Pickering of Mint Themes and Astoundify

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How to drive more traffic to your theme site

You’re going to learn a lot in this episode, so I hope you have a pen and paper ready!

Adam discussed that targeting niche theme markets was the stepping stone for Mint Themes. When he launched his first theme SoundStage, he actually had experience with being in a band. He knew what folks looking to launch a music site wanted. He was able to create great blog articles and keywords around the niche.

What do we call this? Content marketing!

He slowly started building out other niche sites for WordPress themes — including Church based themes. Eventually to wrangle all the marketing under one roof, he needed to build a brand. Thus, Mint Themes was born.

This is a great journey to listen to if you are wrestling with your marketing efforts. Learn from Adam and put it to use in your own WordPress business.

What do you think about Adam’s adventure?

You’re not charging enough for your theme

Oddly enough, my good friend Chris Lema just posted this today.

Adam also felt like we were in a race to the bottom. Mint Theme’s pricing is on the higher side of the average and he justifies it. Adam’s point is to let customers know, you’re a real person or team with real expenses — this is a real business.

Take pride in the product your offering and the price will reflect that.

Your thoughts on pricing WordPress products?

Introducing Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger Media, is down right nerve wracking. I don’t even want to type anymore, that’s how badly I think I’m going to get criticized.

I digress.

Here are a few headlines that danced around my head:

“Episode 30: Watch Brian Clark ride a Unicorn and throw a kitten” or “Episode 30:  Jeff Bridges as Copyblogger founder Brian Clark” and lastly ”Episode 30: Guy blogs, builds million dollar WordPress company”

Enough! Let’s get to the show!

Interview with Brian Clark founder of Copyblogger Media

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Know, Like and Trust

Know, like and trust.

This is the mantra of the Copyblogger team and my takeaway from this interview.

It’s not your PHP chops, Photoshop skills or the size of your WordPress team — it’s that folks know you, like you and trust you.

Forget sales revenue for a moment. Forget building a massive WordPress website. It’s about forging the relationship of a client that will stay with you and work with you for years to come.

Not just a one off project.

Here’s the way I see it — if you’re spending time applying this mantra, chances are you’re also going feel the same way about the client.

Working together will be frictionless. There won’t be awkward talk about payment or timeline. You won’t have that weighted feeling when the client e-mails in for a new project update. The relationship you created doesn’t have room for negative feelings — this is how you do business now.

What’s the best way to let client’s know about the new you? Content marketing!

Copyblogger is different

This interview isn’t about how StudioPress themes are designed or how they run their support forums — it’s a look into their diversified products and services.

Personally, I’m really excited to see where they go with the Scribe software they produce. I think it’s smart, possibly necessary,  to diversify yourself beyond WordPress to achieve higher levels of scale and growth.

There’s no surprise that with a recent redesign of their website, they are all in on content marketing.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: We’re in an interesting phase of the WordPress growth spurt. It’s only a matter of time until we see some larger WordPress companies really break away from the pack and follow the traditional path of a silicon valley startup.

Could Copyblogger be the first?

(I’m speculating here, but someone’s gotta do it.)

This interview

You know I like to pop in from time to time and share my feelings about my progress as the host of the podcast.

If you couldn’t tell I was nervous in this interview. Brian’s just one of those super smart guys that should be on a Wheaties box. Interviewing a guy like him as a newbie podcast host and then having to write about him in this blog post as someone who sucks at writing — not fun.

I want your feedback. Did you like this episode? Do you want something different?

I’m grossly behind on publishing episodes, but it’s because I want the lessons to properly sink in. This was recorded almost 2 months ago and I have 15 to publish. I’m working on it.

That’s the way I felt when I interviewed Rafal Tomal lead WordPress designer at Copyblogger. Ok, you might not love WordPress themes as much as I do, but if you do, I bet you love the stuff Rafal has put out.

If you’re a fan of his work and you want to dive into the mind of lead designer — don’t miss this episode!

Matt Report Interview with Rafal Tomal

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What it’s like designing WordPress themes at Copyblogger

I enjoyed learning how some of my favorite WordPress themes are being designed over at StudioPress.

Brain Gardner refers to Rafal as his diamond in the rough and I don’t disagree. This opportunity at learning the process, thoughts, tools, time and fun they have putting into building themes is just great.

Aside from working at Copyblogger, we talk about supporting customers, looking for inspiration and some of his future plans — including a book!

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. If you have questions, post below!

So that got me thinking, is WordPress recession proof?

WordPress services can be sliced and diced in many ways. It’s not creating “work” that’s the hard part, it’s finding the right vertical.

Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing joins us to share what it was like starting out in the recession, finding a niche and building an awesome virtual team.

Interview with Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing

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Recessions, niches and teams — oh my!

Can we say AWESOME interview?

Rebecca shares a ton of great info about her journey as a WordPress entrepreneur. If you’re just starting your business or you’re a seasoned veteran, you’re going to get a lot of great info out of this one.

It seems a lot of great WordPress companies came out of the recession. Folks like Cory Miller and Rebecca saw great opportunity and growth and dove in head first when the rest of the world was running away.

These economic swings are like huge reset buttons. You will hear people say no one is spending money, but that’s just wrong. When one door closes another opens. They might not be spending money on the “usual” products and services but now is the time to offer an alternative.

WordPress was and is poised to do just that. Offer up a complete solution for any size business at any budget  with a community to see it forward.

When did you start your business? What was your biggest challenge? Let me know in the comments!

Friendly reminder

Hey, I’m on iTunes and if you love the show — I’d love a review! Head on over to The MattReport on iTunes

Folks who are honing in on one vertical industry and putting out a great product or service.

Angie Meeker of Angie Meeker Designs walks us through her journey of starting out in the WordPress world to finding a niche vertical business. If you’re all about focus and growing — don’t miss this episode!

Interview with Angie Meeker

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Finding your niche

A lot of us start out trying to grab as much business as we can. Who can blame us? We need to pay the bills and generate revenue.

There’s nothing wrong with it, you just have to be prepared to scale in some vertical. Some expertise that sets you apart from the rest. What can you do really really well? Great even.

This will be your value proposition in your market. Your edge to landing the deal.

What niche are you in? I’d love to hear in the comments below!

The question is, do you really want to?

Ryan Duff joins us in Episode 26 to discuss his journey from freelancer to working at WebDevStudios one of the fastest growing WordPress shops around.

Don’t miss this episode if you’re looking for a change in your WordPress career!

Interview with Ryan Duff, developer at WebDevStudios

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Freelance vs Agency

One of my goals for Matt Report is to help WordPress entrepreneurs choose the ideal path to success. I do however, leave the definition of success up to them.

If you’re going to be a freelancer, there’s a lot to consider before you even being working a project. Here’s just a few:

• Finding clients
• Negotiations
• Contracts
• Expectations
• Project management
• Billing and receivables
• Cash flow
• Customer support
• Doing it all over again…

“But I don’t want to deal with that Matt!” you might be saying.

Well then listen to what Ryan has to say about agency life. There’s a lot of positives to working with a team and not just for getting the work done — but handling all of the overhead of client services.

Positive reinforcement

I’ve received some great feedback lately and I’m really happy people are enjoying the show. If there’s another angle you want me to include, questions I should ask more frequenetly or you simply want me to stop the “ahh’s & umm’s” let me know in the comments!

As always, share this with others if you can — I appreciate it!

I sit down with Aaron Holbrook of A7 Web Design to discuss how he’s doing just that and more.  Aaron shares his unique story and how it has unfolded into building his virtual agency.

Don’t miss Episode 25!

Interview with Aaron Holbrook of A7 Web Design

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How is your brand perceived?

Here’s what I found interesting when talking to Aaron — I mentioned I loved his site and it made his agency feel bigger than just one person.

He laughed and said that wasn’t the plan. In fact, he wants to convey quite the opposite. He wants to be the face of the company. The familiar voice on the phone supporting the client or in the e-mail drafting the first proposal.

It made me think, are we losing leads by presenting a brand persona that’s out of reach for some? “I don’t have the budget for these guys.”, they might say?

Or is this exactly what quality work should be doing? Finding clients with bigger budgets and bigger projects.

I would love to hear your side of the story!

Side note: What was up with my hair in this episode?! Ha!

Take your idea and cut it and half and then cut it in half again. Then pick the top 3 features of you product and cross off 2 of them. What do you have left?

Buttons.

I love the idea of Max Foundry’s button plugin because it solves such a simple problem. Don’t have the design chops or time to code some sweet CSS buttons? Let’s see how Dave Donaldson solved this issue and built a business around it.

Interview with Dave Donaldson of Max Foundry

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Keep it simple stupid

A popular Matt Report interview is with John Saddington — we chat about the power of focus and simplifying your message/product.

One of the hardest things to do as an entrepreneur is to “say no” to all the wonderful features and functions we want to build. Once we start adding more “stuff” to our products & offering we start getting spread thin. Not enough vertical focus or rinse/repeat systems are in place.

Here’s what I think you’re going to love about this interview — Dave started with buttons as his first product. Buttons!

From there, he took this simple solution and grew other products. Built a nice base of folks to market to and then capitalized.

Don’t miss this episode especially if you’re just launching your new business!

Like what I’m doing? Can you share this on Twitter or Google Plus? Share this if you love to talk WordPress shop!

Podcasts, YouTube channels, weekly newsletters, and recently a 24 hour live marathon are all on the rise.

It’s why I produce this podcast and why many others are starting to turn the camera and mic to WordPress. My latest guest runs a very popular WordPress podcast called Your Website Engineer.

Meet Dustin Hartzler!

Interview with Your Website Engineer Dustin Hartzler

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How producing WordPress media can help you

A lot of my guests talk about marketing strategies, SEO tactics, and creating your own marketplace.

Dustin found his niche in producing a helpful WordPress podcast after he was fielding a lot of the same questions from clients. Much like how I started Matt Report — I was getting a lot of “How do I do X in my WordPress business?”

What do you think about WordPress media? Do you watch any WordPress shows or podcasts other than Dustin and I?

Have you thought about creating your own?

Let us know in the comments!

Meet Thomas Griffin author of Soliloquy a powerful responsive WordPress slider. In this interview we discuss what it’s like to start off small and continue to refine to find the success you’re looking for.

Don’t miss this episode!

Interview with Thomas Griffin

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The power of one

A slider seems pretty basic right? A couple of images rotating across the screen — no big deal.

But when you’re building a plugin for the world’s most popular web publishing software, especially in an ecosystem of free, the business is tough.

Thomas takes us down his journey of starting the business, finding focus, refining product, and marketing to WordPress users.

I really enjoyed this interview and I hope you do too. Feel free to share this on the Twitter and join my mailing list — every little bit helps http://mattreport.com/subscribe